May 24, 2015

Now, the laws of the Spirit involve you taking charge of
yourself. We have been defining faith as more than just
belief. It’s hanging your body on what you know God has
said in His Word. Will you honestly confess you have been
a little guilty on occasion of not being so “moderate,”
as we’ve defined it?
Pastor Scott continues: How many of us can admit we’ve done
a little anxious caring recently? Would you like to put
God’s law in motion? You can take hold of yourself and
say, “I’m going to put God’s law in motion until my
family and people around me can know my moderation and
can experience the joy I find in the Lord. He is enough.
Take everything else. I know whom I have believed.”

Now, walk out claiming the victory.

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September 14, 2014

What was the burnt offering? There the focus was not on sin, but
dedication. Instead of the sacrifice being the recipient of God’s wrath
with the carcass being taken out of God’s presence and the focus being
on the sacrifice as a substitute sacrifice for sins, it was a dedicatory
offering. An animal was brought; the believer identified with it by
putting hands on it and then let it again be taken as a substitute. When
the animal was slain, the blood containing the life was captured, but not a
drop would be wasted. The animal was skinned that it might be seen as
clean inside and out, cut in small pieces and every part of it was put on
the altar and burned with frankincense, speaking of heart attitude, totally
consumed for God.

That was dedication.

If you want it in one sentence:
the believer stood there and said, “As I walk away, my intent is for my
living sacrifice to equal the dedication of the animal that is burned before
Thee in total dedication.”

Jesus became our sin-bearer in fulfilling the
type; He became the perfect expression of God’s will and the joy of the
cross as He was consumed unto death.

March 9, 2014

Now I have been teaching elementary grace, that God takes the
initiative when He calls anyone; we all know that. Do we? God is
speaking to every person here. Nobody is listening by accident.

Elementary grace: that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of
God; Being justified freely by his grace….” (Romans 3:23-24) We all
begin as sinners. We learn to memorize routine phrases. We get down
on our knees, and we say, because we learn it by rote, “If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” (1 John 1:9) And
because of some crammed-in theological creed we say, “Yes, I am a
sinner and I confess it.”

You don’t have to tell me and you don’t have to tell your neighbor, but way down in your secret heart, are you feeling you are a shameful thing? Do you feel a little unworthy? If you do, then this message can speak to you.

You have heard me discourse on sin. I have heard everything
called “sin,” from automobiles to the color or lack of it on your face, to
the length of your hair, to whether jewelry touches your skin or doesn’t
touch it. If somebody wants to corner me on the subject of sin, I am
going to start cataloguing the verses: Proverbs 6, six things God hates,
“seven are an abomination unto him.” Do you know what the seventh is?
“Sowing discord among the brethren.” Ephesians 4 speaks of things that
will grieve the Spirit away from you. You can read it; get yourself a
Bible dictionary, diagram the sentences. The opening of Ephesians 5 also
speaks of things that will grieve the Spirit away from you. Galatians 5
speaks of the “lusts of the flesh.” Now, that word lust takes on a lot of
drama in the modern world; but when they wrote the King James
Version, it simply translated a Greek word that means desire. The
“desires of the flesh” are contrasted with the “fruit of the Spirit.”

Romans 1 and 2, which we have already referenced, speak of
things that will, if you persist in them, result in God turning you over to
a strong delusion: you will believe a lie and be damned. Read
Colossians 3. Run the cross-references. There are things in God’s book
that He is forever against. I just named one of them: “sowing discord
among the brethren.” “Well, that applies to everybody but me, because I
tithe and I am like the Pharisees…” who do certain things but neglect the
weightier matters.

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January 6, 2014

God has not changed; the devil has not changed; man has not changed. God changes not. He still calls, He still leads. He still demands availability, symbolized by the tent. He still demands sacrifice and death to what I want, symbolized by the altar; but He is still a God of promise.

The devil has not changed: he will still try to break us down. And man hasn’t changed: we’ll still have our failures as well as our successes.

But wherever you are on your journey now, God’s Word claims the promise in Christ for you: “Lift up now thine eyes.” From where? Wherever you are.

Where art thou? In your sin? Let’s address that one first. There are sinners gathered together here in church on Sunday morning. We are all sinners saved by grace, but there are those who are forever kept away from God by some warped idea that when they come to God, they must be able to live a perfect life. Or when they finally decide to come to God, they think that they are going to straighten themselves out sufficiently that He will get a little better performance from them than what they think they are worth right now. “From the place where thou art, lift up now thine eyes.” The promise of the Lord is “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

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November 10, 2013

“It came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the L ORD hath sent me to Bethel.”

That was the first time he said it. Elijah, the type of the Master, said to Elisha, “Tarry here,” don’t go with me, “for the LORD hath sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said unto him, As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy master from thy head to day? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. And Elijah said unto him,” second time now, “Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee.”

They had departed from Gilgal, and Elijah said, “Wait there. I’m going to Bethel.” Elisha said, “No, I’m going with you.” At Bethel, Elijah said, “Wait here, I’m going to Jericho.” Elisha said no , “As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho. And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho”; there sure are a lot of those fellows everywhere you go! “And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the LoRD will take away thy master from thy head to day? And he answered, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.” Now, that is a jumping off place. “And Elijah said unto him, Tarry…here.” For the third time, notice the repetition, the master says, “Tarry,” don’t go with me, “I pray thee, here; for the LORD hath sent me to Jordan. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” Now watch a word crop out that wasn’t there before. “And they two,” circle that word, “they two went on.”

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September 15, 2013

Does Jesus or God prefer the distressed, discontented, debtors and the have-nots? Some people think that God prefers the ignorant and the have-nots. That’s not true. But what God does want usually eliminates everybody else. It isn’t that God prefers the have-nots: but He prefers something that tends to eliminate everyone but the havenots.

God will have nothing less than all of you: your talents, your gifts…and a part of you is not enough. It is 100 percent. I have said for years, if I could somehow conceive of a Christian commitment that would require only 90 percent of one’s life and let people keep the key to a 10 percent room in their house I could “win more to the Kingdom.”

But Jesus said, He “that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:33)

There are no “volunteers” in the Kingdom. On every level, this is the commitment. It is morally wrong to subject any child in Sunday school to a teacher who thinks he is doing God a favor to teach.

There is no such thing as “your work” and “His work.” You are either His 100 percent or you are not His, and it is all His. You have no family: you raise your family for His glory.

You don’t have a business: you are a steward managing your business for Him. You don’t have a career or a future: you are His to command! There is no church that is mine or yours; it is His.

God will have nothing less than all of you. And that God would take such stuff on which to build His Kingdom as typified in the Adullamites and illustrated in the disciples tells me that it means a lot to Him to have 100 percent. He will start over with such as these, like the parable Jesus told of a certain man who made a great supper and sent nvitations. And all those invited made excuses. One had a wife, another had a yoke of oxen to look at, another had a piece of ground. The man said to his servant, “Bring in the lame and the halt.” (Luke 14:16-24)

When God calls, He wants all of you; that is a serious side of this message.

July 1, 2013

1 JOHN 2:6: “HE THAT SAITH HE ABIDETH IN HIM ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” Hear it again, “He that saith he abideth in him…” and I might say, “Who is among us that saith this?”

We who are filled with the Spirit say that He abides in us because we know the promise that the Spirit comes to abide. In verse 5, John asks a question by implication; and then he answers it in the statement: “hereby know we that we are in him.” How do we know? “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.”

There is a lot of talk today about spirituality. There are those who point to someone else and say, “He is spiritual” or, “He is not spiritual.” I wonder what these people mean by that word spiritual. Some people think that in order to be spiritual, you have to float 40 feet off the ground and act funny. They relate spirituality to certain kinds of “feeling” phenomena, having not learned to distinguish between “manifestation” and “demonstration.” It is a subtle distinction.

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June 2, 2013

As Jochebed to me symbolizes the preserving care and the love of a mother who will never give up in preserving the loved, helpless child, and as Jochebed symbolizes the love of God reaching to the helpless; then Mary, the mother of Jesus, symbolizes the never changing, never deviating, never bending, never wavering, never falling down love of a mother for the rejected one.

Have you ever felt rejected? I have. If you feel rejected today, look at Mary. She did not waver in her love, against every kind of opposition…even her own felt sense of being rejected.

There is another picture here; for at times, we tend to turn off on God and we reject God. But as an earthly mother would not waver in her love, and would be standing there while everyone else rejected Him, God will be standing there too.

November 25, 2012

Nobody is guiltless. So since you are guilty, along with this
preacher, how are you going to get over it?

Don’t beat yourself to death because you are anxiously caring
about that one little thing. Put something in its place:
displacement. “But in every thing...” that is: that one little
thing, or those many little things you have been anxiously worrying
about. For every single one of the things you have been worrying
about, when the worrying pressure comes, you put something
else in its place, like a legal cancellation instrument, or like
the turning of a valve...on what? “In every thing by prayer,”
circle the words, “and supplication.” Circle the word
“with thanksgiving.” Circle the word “let your requests be
made known unto God.” Those are four separate Greek words.
Pastor Scott continues explaining that prayer has to do with worship.
It is that word where we express adoration and praise to God.
In the midst of my anxious care, I am told what to do when
that thought intrudes.
Got a pain? “Oh Lord, it’s cancer!”
A little indigestion? “Lord, I’m having a heart attack!”
Have you ever done that? The minute it comes, instead of running
to someone else to spread that refuse of fear, stop! You can’t take
the fear away, but you can turn the spigot on something else.
And God’s Word says “sacrifice praise.” It is pretty hard to keep
worrying if you just turn these lips loose and start praising God.

December 28, 2011

Pastor Melissa Scott continues her teaching on the “Potter’s House.” The potter, God, who was in the beginning, is the boss. He formed and created.

We have a tendency to make this an abstract picture that somehow the clay formed itself. The clay formed itself, right? In Genesis 2 isn’t that what it says? The clay made itself. No. That’s not what it says. It says, “The one being (the Potter), He did this work.” The same thing is being spoken of.

And, by the way, the pot was marred in the hand of the potter. It marred itself. It’s not because God pressed too much or did too little or too fast or too quick or… The clay, the vessel marred itself. “What do you mean?” Go back to Genesis. That clay is Adam. That clay is Eve. The clay marred itself through distrust, disfaith, disobedience.

And too many people want to blame God for their circumstance. God, in His purpose, is going to take us back to the Book of Ephesians and His purpose. He chose out from among others.

The Bible’s full of the purpose, God’s purpose. Can you live with the purpose? The purpose is: “I’d like to be more of Him and less of me.”

I already know that. But do you look at yourself as a vessel of grace? Because until Ephesians 2 we were dead in trespasses and sin. At that point in my life I looked at myself as a finished product. Now I look at myself as a vessel that every day, little by little, abides to crucify the old man. Little by little every day that old nature of me is dying away. Little by little; sometimes very, very little, but little by little being transformed. And this occurrence makes me a vessel of grace.

I find it interesting, as many times as I read this, that it didn’t dawn on me that we start with a potter who’s got the wheel. And it says the clay. But he says, the vessel he made of clay. It means while God was doing His work, it transformed itself from a dull, lifeless nothing piece of clay, being transformed into a vessel. And at that point it was marred. It’s very subtle.